


incunabula;

by pentaghastly



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: (hint: there's three and they're really obvious), Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Ambiguous Female Inquisitor, F/M, POV Second Person, human? elf? YOU DECIDE, rating is for language, spot the fandom reincarnations!, this is cheesy and i am ashamed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:32:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3324272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t know if he remembers you. You don’t know if it matters. You’ve lived a thousand lives, some with him, some without, and you can feel your soul starting to get tired.</p><p>The last one is coming soon, you think.</p><p>You’d better make it count.</p><p>(a reincarnation AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	incunabula;

**Author's Note:**

> _incunabula_ \- the earliest stages or first traces of anything.

>   
> _"In that book which is my memory,_  
>  On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you,  
>  Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’.”  
>  ― Dante Alighieri

The first time you meet him, it’s a Tuesday.

A Tuesday, and it’s pouring rain - typically you wouldn't mind the weather, since you’ve always thought rain to be quite peaceful, but this is not rain, this is _rain_ , and it’s windy and the cold is nipping at your cheeks with a bite harder than your childhood dog, and there’s still another ten blocks to walk back to your apartment, and there is not a single cab in sight. Not that you could afford one if there was.

So you slip into the first bit of sanctuary you can find; a coffee shop with obnoxiously bright lighting and horrible music filtering in through the speakers - you can't make it out, but it sounds like something your father would listen to in the garage when he was trying to relive his glory days - but it’s dry, and it’s warm, and it’s relatively empty considering most people had the good sense to stay in their homes when they saw that the sky was raining down the wrath of the gods. You had almost done the same, but cash is tight and a single day off of work could mean not paying your rent for the month. Of course, if you end up with the flu you may just end up making things ten times worse, but still.

It’s all just semantics, really.

(Semantics - what does that even mean? Are you using it right? Probably not - you hear people say it all the time but you haven’t actually got a clue, you just like the way it makes you sound kind-of smart.)

Normally you wouldn’t even consider spending money on something so needless, but after five minutes in the shop and a cold still seeping deep into your bones, you decide a tea really can’t hurt your bank account too badly. Besides, a small has got to be no more than what, a dollar? You’re cheap, you have to be, but even you aren’t _that_ cheap.

There’s a man working behind the counter, a man who stutters slightly when he asks you for your name, a man who flushes beet red when your hands accidentally brush as he passes you your change, a man who says thank you at least ten times when you leave fifty cents in the tip jar - quite the big spender today, you are - and he smiles at you, and he’s _cute_. Really cute, actually.

While you wait for him to boil the hot water for your tea you consider giving him your number...but do you have anything to write it on? Would he even want it? And how would you go about doing that to begin with? You’re horrible with this kind of thing, always have been, and judging from the flush that paints his cheeks whenever he glances in your direction, it’s probably pretty likely that he’s not exactly the smoothest talker either. So you contemplate all the things that could possibly wrong, all the things that you could mess up in the process.

You’re broke. You work three dead-end jobs. You’re probably going to get kicked out of your apartment soon - your apartment that smells vaguely like cat piss thanks to your roommate’s three (three!) pets, pets which absolutely hate your guts, practically claw your face off every time you go to pet them, but you have to put up with them since you definitely can’t make rent on your own -

By the time he hands you the to-go cup almost too-full of green tea, you have already made your way to number fifteen. _Fifteen_ ; twenty by the time you’re sitting in an armchair in the opposite corner from the counter. 

You don’t give him your number, and you never see him again, of course. That’s usually the way that these things tend to go.

…

The next time you meet him it is directly in the middle of the second World War, and your head and heart is tired and you have seen more than enough of death. But you have always had a strong stomach and you are soft and gentle with your hands, so when you first heard it announced on the radio that the soldiers would need good nurses you were one of the first to offer up your help.

You see dozens, sometimes a hundred men a day. Sometimes they live, walk away with scars and bruises and phantom limbs, but they _live_. Sometimes they do not. You often catch yourself wondering which is the better alternative.

Physically, he fares slightly better than most. He’s got a broken leg and a concussion and more than a couple of bullet holes, but it’s nothing that a cast, stitches, and large amounts of rest won’t be able to fix. You once saw a man come in with only his left arm remaining. You weren’t really surprised, not at all, to discover that he never came out. 

But the patient - Rutherford, they doctors call him, and you think that it’s a proud name, a strong one - has other injuries, ones that cannot be seen with stethoscopes and x-rays, ones that no amount of morphine can ease, and you find yourself drifting to his bedside far more often than you should, staying there far longer. Far more often than is appropriate, probably, but there is something about him that strikes you as almost...familiar, in a sense. Perhaps he reminds you of your brother. Perhaps he reminds you of yourself.

So each day you spend an extra five, extra ten, minutes at his bedside. You press a cold cloth to his forehead and tell him needless things - you tell him about the sunshine, or about your neighbors cat who just birthed kittens, the tiniest things you have ever seen, or about the flowers that are beginning to grow just outside the hospital’s windows. Sometimes he doesn’t say anything. Sometimes he smiles. Sometimes he asks you questions - is it raining? what kind of music are people listening to? - and you answer them as best you can. If you ever lie just to make the world seem a bit kinder, a bit brighter, well, he does not have to know.

He asks you your name, you tell him. He tells you it's pretty, and you tell him that for a man as injured as he, he's quite the smooth talker. He laughs at this, and it's the first time you've hear him laugh, well...ever. It's a little tight, a little restrained, and you wonder if that's because of the pain or because that's just the way he is. You think it may be a combination of the two. But it's a good sound, a happy sound, and this is the part of your job you like the best. The part where they stop living and start _living_. It doesn't happen often, but when it does - when it does, it makes it all worth it.

Six weeks later you wheel him out of the hospital, leg still in a cast, and watch as he tilts his face up to meet the morning sun; it is the first clear sky in a fortnight at least. His wife is there to pick him up, a pretty young thing, and you hope she loves him dearly. He's going to need it.

…

You’re a rancher’s daughter and he’s your father’s wrangler, strong and rugged and tanned from endless days spent in the fields. 

It’s childish, but you spend nearly all your days like this, watching him. His curls are golden and they shine with sun and sweat and when he shakes them out of his eyes your heart skips a few beats extra. You want to reach out and touch them, want to -

You don’t really know _what_ you want. You’d like to kiss him, you think, and when he smiles at you and tilts his hat you think maybe he’d like to kiss you too. Would he? You know there’s prettier girls in the town, pretty girls like Josie, the one who works at the saloon, the one your brothers are half in love with. It’s a shame she’s so sweet, probably the sweetest girl you've ever met. You’d be more than happy to dislike her if she didn’t make it so damn hard.

But he doesn’t go to the saloon like most men do, says he doesn’t like all the noise, never acquired a taste for whiskey. He smiles at you when he says this, and you wonder - 

You never get the chance to find out. Fever takes you in the spring of your sixteenth year, and it’s probably for the best. Your Ma always warned you that if sickness didn’t kill you, loving a cowboy would.

…

He is the heir to a vast fortune and you are his family’s scullery maid.

He hardly ever glances in your direction, but when he does he is nothing but warm and gentle and kind.

This is the time you start to remember everything. This is the time you start to remember _him_.

…

Sometimes he’s not there. Sometimes the world changes.

It’s funny, almost, because you had sort-of thought in a few of your earlier lives that the whole ‘multiverse’ theory was a load of bullshit. Not that it wasn’t a nice idea to believe in, of course, but honestly, the possibility of an infinite number of universes out there was just terrifying. And sort of ridiculous. Then again, you had _also_ previously thought that death was just...it, but you had been proven about as wrong as you could possibly get, so clearly you aren't exactly the expert on determining what is or is not possible.

Still, cross-universal reincarnation didn’t sound like the most likely thing. Not in the least.

One life you are the daughter of a Siksiká chief - you do not meet him that time, the one you always meet, but it is a good life, a happy one, so you don’t mind quite so much - but in the next your skin is a lovely shade of blue and you look down at the humans, the ones you once considered your people, and are amazed by the fact that they are...remarkably close to children.

It is odd. Slightly disconcerting, especially because you can’t express any of it aloud - you’re fairly certain that remembering previous lives as a member of another species is not, in fact, a common occurrence.

That life is - it is _long_. You don’t mind, really, because you learn so much, _so_ much, but you live for far more years than any mortal should, and you are tired. You do meet him, actually befriend him - he’s still a human, and his skin is much darker and his hair is somehow even curlier, but you would know that smile anywhere. He’s a soldier (again, it seems to be almost a pattern for him), and when you work at a bar for a couple hundred years he sometimes comes in to visit during his shore leave. You talk a bit, and it’s nice, but he’s got a good-looking boyfriend and, despite what you want to think, they do make a good couple.

Then there’s the time that you’re a human again, but there’s _magic_ , and it’s odd because you remember reading these books once before, during one of your many childhoods, books about witches and wizards and secret schools, and you had always been so fascinated, always thought it sounded like the loveliest time.

Well, you suppose all-together it’s alright. The thing is that the fun of magic sort of wears off after a while, and by the time you’re thirteen it has become just as mundane as anything else.

You two are in the same dorm and even though he’s a year older than you you become a strange kind of friends - you even hear a few whispers when you’re fifteen that he thinks you're pretty, that he might just ask you on a date, and he starts blushing whenever you look his way, but nothing ever comes of it. 

And you know, each time around, that you could be the one to take the initiative, that you can’t just sit around waiting for him forever. But it seems unfair, almost, as if you’re taking advantage of him - because you know so much, have _seen_ so much, so much of time and space and so much of him, and...and you think that, when he’s ready, the time will come.

Sometimes he’s there. Sometimes he isn’t. There’s one time where he’s your best friend in the world when you’re children and you’re _this close_ to kissing him on your twelfth birthday, but his family moves him far away and you never meet him again. There’s another where you’re soldiers on a ship together, allies, partners in a fucked-up war, the result of humans trying to play god and then washing their hands of the things that they created, but you both know that this is the wrong place, the wrong time - he dies three days before the end, so clearly you were right.

You don’t know if he remembers you. You don’t know if it matters. You’ve lived a thousand lives, some with him, some without, and you can feel your soul starting to get tired.

The last one is coming soon, you think.

You’d better make it count.

…

He’s got a scar on his upper lip and when he looks at your his eyes are filled with distrust and apprehension, burning into your glowing hands - one with magic, one with the mark - but it’s _him_. God, Andraste, Creators, _whoever_ has trapped you in this never-ending loop, you cannot believe it is him.

Commander Cullen Rutherford, they call him. Leader of their - _your_ armies. The last name is familiar, the first is new - _Cullen_ , and you think that it suits him. There’s not a spark of recognition in his eyes, not a glimmer of familiarity, and your mind wanders to the time when you were laboratory partners in your college biology class and you both turned to face each other too quickly and ended up bumping noses in the middle of a dissection; He had laughed it off as nothing, you never mentioned it again. But you remember. You always remember.

He doesn’t trust you. He won't for a long time. You’re a little miffed, but you can’t blame him, not completely. Your hand is glowing green and you don’t think you would trust yourself either.

(And if the others think to themselves that it’s a little odd that a mage is trying so desperately hard to win the goodwill of a former templar, well, then you suppose you must let them. They likely think it’s only due to his good looks, and though you’d like it to be a lie you do have to admit that this lifetime has treated him well, at least as far as appearances go.)

He’s weary, and tired, and slow to trust. That’s okay, you think, because you are too. You’ve walked a thousand different paths, and he has walked five hundred of those with you. You can wait. 

For this, for _him_ , you can wait - you have waited too long to give up now.

…

You’ve lived a thousand different lives. He’s lived five hundred of them with you.

He kisses you during your last.

It’s raining in Skyhold, just a drizzle, but you’re thankful for it because it camouflages the tears that stain your cheeks as his mouth moves against your own - it’s soft and sweet, and it’s everything you expected you would be, and you’re pretty sure you didn’t take the best path to get here, certainly not the easiest, but his hands are tight around your waist and this was _his_ kiss, _his_ choice, and you think that he must have been worth it.

He pulls away, rests his forehead against yours, and you marvel at how well you fit together. You’ve taken lovers before, but none of them have fit into each shallow curve of your body quite as easily as he.

“How long?” He asks, and his voice is rough, jagged, but lovely. “How long have you waited to do that?” And you know what he really means - he has known you for six months and fifteen days, but you have known him for all of time and longer. He asks you how long and you want to laugh, and the answer spills out of you before you can stop yourself.

“Forever,” you tell him, and his answering smile is like staring straight into the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos are appreciated more than you know <3


End file.
